The Soviet Union served as the glue that held the conservative movement together. Winning this existential battle against an atheistic, imperialist, and Marxist regime made the various wings of the conservative movement willing to overlook their differences, put their pet issues on the back burner, and police their own ranks. A common culture, a mainstream media monopoly, and a post-war consensus helped create guardrails that ensured the game of American politics was mostly played between the 40-yard lines. And inspiring conservative leaders like Reagan emerged to defeat this existential enemy.

But once the threat and the leaders were no longer around, the incentives that animated its pre-Cold War state returned to tempt the GOP…

“I found that the Cold War conservatism, which shaped you and shaped me early in my life, was unusual in some respects,” Continetti told me. “We can see how in the conservatism in which you and I came of age—those elements that were more conspiratorial, that were fringier, that were more contemptuous of modern America—had been cabined off. But that’s no longer the case.”